In India, we are at that time of the year when a financial year ends and the new one starts. Most companies would have made their new year plans – marketing strategy, Capex budget, geographical expansion, and manpower.
In its thrust to gain more customers/ sales/ revenue/ products – the talent acquisition teams of the company would be asked to scout the market for stars from outside. Sometimes with a brief of recruiting with no purse strings attached.
Prima facie – it looks like a winning strategy, but does it always work?
Does IPL offer some lessons?
To the initiated and the un-initiated, IPL is the great Indian cricket festival. Over 17 years, it has grown from strength. Each year, it becomes more storied – be its valuation, the advertising rates, the digital rights, the simultaneous views or for its astronomical player fees.
Each year teams break the bank to buy some player. Oohs and Aahs meet the buy during auctions. Do these players deliver the same when they play?
Over the last five years – the most expensive players have been (year, player, Fees) – 2019 – Jaydev Unadkat and Varun Chakravarthy (8.4 Cr), 2020 – Pat Cummins (15.5 Cr), 2021- Chris Morris (16.25 Cr), 2022 - Ishan Kishan (15.25 Cr), 2023 – Sam Curran (18.5 Cr).
The first question – since cricket is a team game, did these expensive hires win the trophy for the respective recruiters?
The final position on the points table of the acquiring teams each year was 2019 – 7th and 6th, 2020 – 5th, 2021 – 7th, 2022- 10th and 2023 – 8th.
Ok, cricket is a team game – a single player cannot own the whole burden – did these players set the field on fire – win orange / purple cap? The answer is sadly a vehement No.
The best bowler among these hires took 15 wickets and the best batter scored 418 runs. They didn’t start the fire.
There are reasons for this underwhelming performance. The paycheck is a publicly known number, resulting in constant media scrutiny – every slip/ failure gives unnecessary publicity increasing the load. Peer, promoter, and personal pressure further impact performance.
The unseen and unknown are the embrace of the team culture. It is very tough for a player to turn up in a new environment and turn up a star performer. The ethos, the eco-system take time to sink in.
Some teams have understood this well. CSK – one of the most successful teams broke the bank twice – for Dhoni in the inaugural year and for Jadeja subsequently.
Dhoni’s investment paid off over the next decade and Jadeja’s hire fitted perfectly into the spin choke strategy of CSK.
The lessons – spend does not necessarily translate to success. In setting the expensive cat among the pigeons, it might hurt team performance. The exception could be hiring a leader and investing time on him/her– Dhoni, Rohit proves its relevance (Kohli’s performance as captain disproves it, sadly).
As they say about investing – time in the market is more important that timing the market – similar thing could hold for a Star performer – timing the hire might pay less returns than time with the Star.
My other blogs can be read at chaganti09.blogspot.com.
